How do you define high functioning?

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OJani: I tend to think of functioning as this buffer zone. Normal functioning produces this buffer zone: a variety of friends and acquaintances one can turn to for help, a variety of skills necessary for keeping a good job, life skills necessary to save money wisely, etc. For many people, their functioning is indistinguishable from the buffer zones they have constructed.

For a very long time, I had one friend, and lived about 300 miles from my family. My support structure was very brittle, there was little redundancy. If I had gotten seriously sick, I only knew one person who could help me by driving me to the hospital, or lending me some money. My finances at the time were week-to-week.

An example: one time I ran completely out of money and food, and had to go a week before getting my next paycheck so I could eat. Other than my friend, I had no one else who could lend me some food. If he had been unavailable, I would have gone without eating for a week. I had no idea how to go to a charity food-drive (literally: I had no means of transportation and no idea where I could find one in walking distance).

At another point, I got pretty bad bronchitis. I had no idea how to get to an emergency room. If I hadn't been able to call my friend so he could drive me there, I would have probably gotten to one much later than I otherwise did. I spent a few days wondering if I should call an ambulance or a cab and where to go, getting increasingly unable to breathe, yet unable to make the decision to get up and go see a doctor.

Someone with a robust life has more sources of support, and redundancy in these sources. Not only can they absorb damaging events with less impact, but unfortunate events in the lives of the people they rely on can also be mitigated.

Think of the financial aspect of a buffer zone. This requires the ability to hold a relatively well-paying job, and the ability to save funds. Both of these can be very hard, and their absence means a much more vulnerable financial situation. Someone may be considered high functioning, but be one ER trip or broken windshield or mugging away from an eviction; another may be considered low functioning but more able to withstand sudden expenses.

One of my coworkers once had $500 stolen from her. For her, this was a big annoyance. For me, having that much stolen from me would mean I'd likely be homeless the next month.

I think the best way to evaluate how high functioning you are, is to ask yourself what would be the consequences of a week or two off work due to an expensive injury. Would you still make rent? Be able to eat? Keep your job? This is my own measure of how robust my life is. Right now, I've got a bit more redundant structures to buffer me, than in the past. But I'm still in a precarious position which could snowball into homelessness very easily.

Anbuend: by my standards, your life is more robust than mine, even if you are considered lower functioning. You have sources of support which provides a buffer in case of unfortunate events.

I may have a job, but I don't have the security you have. This is why I consider robustness to be a more informative measure than "functioning." A "low-functioning" person with high robustness is better able to handle events which would cripple a "high-functioning" person with very brittle support structures.

I think that all the high-functioning in the world does no good if its results can be swept away with a single unfortunate event. Everyone has some threshold of misfortune that would cripple them. Some people would not be able to recover from a house burning down, while others may not be able to recover from having their wallet stolen. Some can withstand taking a month off work due to disability, others may be unemployed on the whim of a bus schedule.

I consider myself to be about one month away from homelessness. A misfortune as small as a week delay in getting a paycheck can mean my utilities will get shut off. A misfortune as large as getting my finger sliced off and not being able to work for a week, can mean getting evicted.

Consider: would the loss of one of your fingers mean almost certain homelessness? That is the measure of your robustness. I am fairly certain that you could withstand the loss of a finger with far lesser consequences than I could.

What you are talking about, has, by your own admission nothing to do with the functioning level of the person and is therefore totally off topic. Otherwise, I would have to say I am higher functioning than you because I live in a country which has a National Health Service and a much more comprehensive welfare state than yours, which is totally nonsensical.

I think the problem with functioning is that you are trying to use a single figure/word to describe a complex picture of different things, which is pretty pointless when applied to NTs who tend to have more stable and uniform abilities, and totally nonsensical when talking about people who have abilities/inabilities that run to extremes. So I don't think functioning labels are particularly useful. It's possible to think of someone like kfisherx as high-functioning and compare her to someone who cannot communicate needs, go to the bathroom on their own, interact with technology, avoid self-harming, can't maintain a home, can't read, can't go out without supervision without being a danger to themself etc. (and I mean can't do any of those things, not just can't some of them) and high functioning v low functioning might be a useful way to distinguish between those types of people. But for anyone between those two extremes, it isn't.

Also, I would say I have been through the course of my life very high functioning, medium functioning, and low functioning. The low functioning parts (which I am just now picking up the pieces from were the result of a deep-seated and long term depression which was resistant to treatment.

I think you have a point about "robustness," though I'd say be careful not to over-estimate the security of being on SSI. And "robustness" seems like a comination of "functioning level" and how various formal and informal supports/services/assistance systems are set-up. (I'm assuming the intended meaning of "functioning level" is something that only relates to the person, rather than also to the 'environment.')

Sort of, R = e^( (A - N + I ) / W ), or

Robustness = e^(( Assistance - Needs + Income ) / probability_of_something_going_Wrong )

And maybe "N" could be "functioning level."

I can see how, say, working but being poor could be worse than being disabled (and getting assistance). Though, it would depend a lot on the details. It seems a function of how messed up the social 'safety net' is. More socialized countries seem to do a better job of not having large holes in it (IOW, planning for some kinds of problems (disability), but not others (poverty, unemployment, under-employment, etc.).)

As far as SSI, you're limited to $1500 in assets, so you're not allowed to accumulate a financial cushion. And it only takes one flawed re-assessment (required every 3 or fewer years, IIRC) to have major problems. A lawyer once warned me to contact her before doing certain things, because the rules can be trecherous and you can end up getting kicked off for the rest of your life, even if you can prove that you need to be back on. And there are bureaucratic screw-ups: I recall one person being over the asset limit for a week and getting cut-off, when the rules say you can be over the limit for a month. It took a while for her to get that straightened out, and in the meantime she had no income and nearly ended up homeless.

If a person loses a finger, hopefully they can fall back on SSDI/SSI/worker's comp or something (though ending up homeless before that can be arranged seems likely if they're surviving paycheck-to-paycheck). But going from SSDI/SSI to nothing, there is no safety net below the safety net (or, hardly any, at least; maybe a nursing home or a hospital that doesn't drop you off at a homeless shelter, if you're lucky). I don't know the odds of losing a finger vs. the odds of having an SSI 'fail,' but I wouldn't start off assuming that SSI 'fails' are necessarily less likely.

And there is also what is going on in the UK -- I gather they are going to make draconian cuts to assistance for disabled people. I more than half-expect something like that to happen in the USA in the not-too-distant future.

Thanks for the responses everyone, I still have no idea where I fit on the 'functioning' scale but it's useful to have different perspectives on it

It's not just the UK, either. The USA is also making draconian cuts in a number of areas. I know someone whose state cut her disability check to $200 a month, not nearly enough to live on, for "budgetary reasons" (while not cutting things that would have far less negative impact on people's lives than cutting SSI/SSDI/RSDI/etc. would). In Florida they have just cut DD services 15% -- enough that people will die. If my services are cut very much at all, I will be in an incredibly precarious situation indeed. (I also have enough medical issues that homelessness could = death much faster for me than for a lot of people, as well. Without electricity I will not only lose the use of my electric wheelchair, but the device I use to breathe at night won't be there either, which will cut down drastically the few walking skills I have. I am desperately trying to find a manual wheelchair for that very reason among others, but finding one that fits my needs and finding the funding sources is a very difficult thing. I can't just pop into a cheap hospital chair and be okay. But then with a manual chair I'd also need someone to push it...) So yeah I think that much like functioning level itself, this robustness thing is incredibly complex, much more complex than people are making it sound. With what's happening in the USA at the moment, I'm in the process of trying to plan for the worst. The problem is the only plan I have is moving in with someone else with severe impairments and trying to help each other. Which is... not looking good at all, but it's better than being separated and each trying to go it alone. We have no other friends around here so that support system is out.

At any rate, being in the service system does in fact provide a safety net on some levels that people without these services don't have. But at the same time, changes to that service system could kill many of the people who have to be in it, and we don't have the other "safety net" of "just" getting a job or "just" shopping/cooking/bathing/etc. for ourselves and other things like that. So it's less a straight line and more an interconnected web of forces all acting on each other in differing ways. (And in many ways it's just the already-existing concept of privilege reworked in a few ways.)